SAFETY AND RISKS

FOR
PROFESSIONALS
Submitted by:
Ashutosh (2K17/ME/066)
Gagandeep (2K17/ME/093)
Gaurav Kumar (2K17/ME/096)
Gautam Meena (2K17/ME/098)
Lokesh Meena (2K17/ME/128)
Madhur Grover (2K17/ME/130)
Safety and Risk
 A thing is “safe” if its risk are judged to be
acceptable.
 Common understanding of Safety
 Under estimate the risk
 Over estimate the risk
 No judgment on whether the risk is acceptable
 Safety is a matter of how people would find risks
as acceptable or unacceptable if they knew the
risks and were basing their judgments on their
most settled value perspectives.
Risk
 A “risk” is a potential that something
unwanted and harmful may occur.
 Categories :
 Experimental risk connected with the
introduction of new technology
 Risk associated with new or expanded
applications of familiar technology
 Risks arising from misapplied attempts
at disaster control
Acceptability of Risk
 A risk is acceptable when those affected are
generally no longer apprehensive about it.
 Apprehensiveness depends on how the risk
is perceived
 Elements of Risk Perception
 Is the risk assumed voluntarily?
 Effect of knowledge
 Job related pressures
 Are potential victims identifiable before hand
Elements of Risk
Perception
 Voluntarism and Control
1. Voluntary Risk
 People take up the risk fully knowing the hazards
involved.
 Motor racing, living near a chemical plant are some
examples
2. Level of Control
 People display unrealistic confidence when they
believe hazards to be under their control
 Motor Racing, Skiing, bungee jumping are examples
where people indulge in these hazardous sports under
the assumed level of control
 Effect of Information – Case Study
 Two groups of 150 people were told about the strategies
available for combating a disease.
 Group1 was given the following description
 Imagine that US is preparing for the outbreak of an
unusual Asian disease, which is expected to kill 600
people. Two alternative programs to combat the disease
have been proposed. Assume that the exact scientific
estimate of the consequences of the program are as
follows:
 If Program A is adopted 200 people will be saved.
 If Program B is adopted there is 1/3 probability that 600
people will be saved and 2/3 probability that no people will
be saved.
 Which of the two programs will you favor?
Two groups of 150 people were told about the strategies available
for combating a disease.
 Group1 was given the following description
 Imagine that US is preparing for the outbreak of an unusual
Asian disease, which is expected to kill 600 people. Two
alternative programs to combat the disease have been
proposed. Assume that the exact scientific estimate of the
consequences of the program are as follows:
 If Program A is adopted 200 people will be saved.
 If Program B is adopted there is 1/3 probability that 600 people
will be saved and 2/3 probability that no people will be saved.
 Which of the two programs will you favor?
 Results of the survey
 Program A – 72%
 Program B – 28%
 Inference
 Vivid prospect of saving 200 people led many of them to feel
adverse to taking a risk of possibly saving all 600 lives.
 Group2 was given the same problem and same two
options but the options were worded differently –
 If Program C is adopted 400 people will die.
 If Program D is adopted there is 1/3 probability that
nobody will die and 2/3 probability that 600 people will
die.
 Which of the two programs will you favor?
 Results of the survey
Program C – 22%
Program D – 78%
 Inference
 People tend to be more willing to take risks in order to
perceive firm losses than they are to win only possible
gains
Probable Gain Vs Probable Loss
Probable Gain Vs Probable Loss

 The typical risk benefit value function

drops more steeply on the loss portion
than it rises on the gain portion.
 A loss side threshold is included, that
means no value is attached to small
amount of loss.
 A small threshold is added on the gain
side to account for normal human
inertia.
Job Related Risks
 Exposures to risk on a job is in a sense
voluntary
 Often employees have little choice other
than to stick with what is for them
 Engineers who design and equip work
stations must take into account the
attitude towards safety shown by other
co workers
Magnitude and Proximity
 Our reaction to risk is affected by a dread
of possible mishap in terms of magnitude
and proximity
 Friends being affected is more keenly
looked upon than a risk affecting strangers
 Misperceptions of numbers can easily
make us overlook losses that are far
greater than the numbers reveal by
themselves
Lessons for the
engineers
 Engineers face two problems
 Overly optimistic attitude – things that are familiar
presents no real risk
 Overly pessimistic attitude – dread people feel
when an accident kills in large numbers, even
though such accidents occur infrequently
 This is a misperception of legitimate concern
expressed publicly by thoughtful citizens
 Barrier to education attempt is that people’s
beliefs change slowly and are extraordinarily
resistant to new information.
Assessment of safety and risk
 Improvement to safety is accomplished
by an increase in cost
 Primary Cost – Production Cost
 Secondary Cost – Warranty expenses,
Losses of customer goodwill etc.
 High Safety(Low Risk) – High Primary
Cost- Low Secondary Cost
 High Risk (Low Safety) – Low Primary
Cost – High Secondary Cost
Uncertainties in Design
 Engineers have traditionally coped with such
uncertainties about materials or components.
 A product may be said to be safe if its capability
exceeds its duty.
 The stress calculated by the engineer for a given
condition of loading and the stress which
ultimately materializes at that loading may vary
quite a bit.
 The stress exposure varies because of
differences in load, environmental conditions or
the manner in which the product is used.
Variability of Stresses in a Safe Case
An UnSafe Case
Testing for Safety
What can an engineer do to ensure safety?
 Rely on experience
 Experience gained by one engineer may not be passed to
other engineers
 Another way of gaining experience is through tests
 More usual procedure is to subject prototypes to testing
 There should be routine “Quality assurance” executed for
ensuring safety
 Problems Faced
 Time Pressure
 Duplication of Test Data
 Outright Fraud – Testers are bribed to pass faulty items
Testing Approaches
 Scenario Analysis
 Starts from a given event and studies from the different
consequences that might evolve from it.
 Failure modes and effects analysis [FMEA]
 Examines the failure modes of each component without
focusing on causes or relationships among the elements.
 Fault Tree analysis [FTA]
 One proposes a system failure and then traces the
events back to possible causes at the component level
 Event Tree analysis
 Reverse of FTA and a more mathematically oriented
version of scenario analysis.
Fault Tree Technique
 Example: A water system plant
 Start with the system failure on the top and
work down through failures in various
subsystems, components and outside factors
or events that could have caused the problem.
 Sometimes one and the other event must all
occur for that next event to happen
 Probability figures can be attached to each
events
 Strength of FTA lies in its qualitative aspects.
Risk Benefit Analysis
Risk Benefit Analysis
 Is the product worth the risk connected with its use
 What are the benefits?
 Do the benefits overweight the risks?
 We should multiply the magnitude of potential loss by the
probability of its occurrence and similarly with the gain
 We are willing to take certain level of risk as long as the project
promises certain range of benefits
 An engineer must keep in mind the following ethical questions
while doing a risk benefit analysis –
 Under what conditions is someone entitled to impose risk on
someone
 Is anyone’s rights violated? Are people provided with safer
alternatives?
Personal Risk and Public Risk

 Personal Risk
 An individual decides whether or not to
participate in a risky activity
 One could possibly respond by the amount
of life insurance taken out by the individual
 Public Risk
 More easily determined because individual
differences tend to even out as larger
number of people are concerned
Incentives to reduce risk
 Engineers should give top priority to product
safety
 Engineers should realize that reducing risk is
not an impossible task even under financial
and time constraints
 Engineers should have a different perception
on design problem, focusing on the safety
 Engineers should remove misconceptions that
militate against application of the extra thought
and effort required to make a product safe.
Liability

 Engineers should be aware of strict liability

 Although it is impossible to test every product the
engineer must weight the chances of a defect
causing a serious injury against the cost of
eliminating or minimizing defects in the product
 Adhering to accepted practices and observing
standards is just not sufficient. They must be
used creatively and judgmentally
 There is a great need to take safety and
emergency measures seriously in large scale
engineering venture
Case Study – Chernobyl
 The case is about a nuclear power plant
 One of the new reactors was put under test
 In preparation for the test the reactor operators had
disconnected the emergency core-cooling system so that its
power consumption would not affect the test results.
 Reactor become unstable.
 There was a huge radioactive fallout.

 Key Learnings
 Procedure should be clearly defined for testing reactors
 Need for training the people on handling emergency situations
 Need for a local monitoring system to be installed in every
country for proactively identifying such mishaps
Case Study – Three Mile Island
 The case is about a nuclear power plant
 Cooling malfunction
 Mechanical failures were compounded by the initial failure
 Trace amounts of radioactive gasses escaped into the surrounding

 Key Learnings
 Need for disaster planning and open mindedness
 Training reforms are among the most significant outcomes of the
TMI accident.
 Inadequate training to the operators to tackle hazardous
conditions.
 Instruments should give the operators adequate indication on the
reactors’ true operating conditions
Safe Exit
 It is impossible to build a completely safe product or a
one that will never fail
 The best one can do is to assure that when a product
fails-
 It will fail safely
 It can be abandoned safely
 User can safely escape the product
 These three conditions are referred to “Safe Exit”.
Examples: 1.ships needs life boats,
2.Buildings need fire exit.
 Provisions are also required for safe disposal of
dangerous products and materials
THANKYOU
(DHANYAWAD)